


A Very Involved Adviser

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22762081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "This CAN be fully consensual college AU fluff or held back a year!Jack or dub/noncon touching and no sex.Any thing. As long as: younger!character/older!character having relationships. Younger being the seducing one or older being the seducing one or both falling at the same time …all is fine.BONUSES:*younger OR older!Pitch/Jack or older!North/JackNervousness when its the first time.One of them thinks is just sex at first. The other doesn’t. Heartbreak until they both get what they want.Happyish ending?"The random number generator selected Tooth/Sandy for this prompt! Tooth is Sandy’s dissertation adviser, and she’s taking him out for a nice dinner (at least). Sandy here is about as young as someone following the academic path with no breaks or skips can be, and he’s never been outside academia. Tooth’s been his brain-crush since undergrad. And now, without further ado, two lovely, bookish people try to determine if the other is interested in a vaguely inappropriate relationship.
Relationships: Sanderson Mansnoozie/Toothiana
Kudos: 1
Collections: Feather Pillow Short Fics





	A Very Involved Adviser

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 10/18/2014.

“I’m so glad you could find time to come to dinner with me tonight,” Dr. Ana says, smiling across the table at Sandy.  
  
“How could I pass up the opportunity to eat real human food?” Sandy asks, half-jokingly. “But, Dr. Ana, you’ll have to excuse the next draft of chapter seven being a couple hours less polished than the earlier ones.”  
  
“Sandy, if I can’t get you to call me Thea even when we’re out to dinner miles off the campus bus lines, I really don’t know what I’m going to do with you."   
  
Sandy cast his eyes down with a rueful smile. "Old habits. Not enough time in the real world, you know. And…Thea…you know who you are. If someone had told me a few years ago, when I was reading _Memory’s Children_ for the first time, that the author would be driving me to dinner someday, I’d have probably had a heart attack. It really wasn’t any trouble to get me, was it?”  
  
“No trouble at all,” Thea assures him. “Now,” she says, leaning forward quickly enough to make her green feather earrings sweep forward, “is it really this dinner that’s going to decrease your work time on chapter seven?”  
  
Sandy feels himself starting to blush, which only makes him blush more. He _hated_ his hair-trigger blush reaction, but there wasn’t even a hope of stopping it this time. If he had had any other adviser, maybe…  
  
Tooth turns her gaze to the menu, hoping to hide any hint of a smile. Sandy might think that she was mocking him, then, but really, she just liked the way he blushed. He turned such an even pink, even under his tan–and he did it so often. Anything he did that he could convince himself was less than perfect, and there it was.   
  
And she did feel sorry for how he felt he needed to be perfect, and she did try to reassure him that he was quite brilliant enough already, that he didn’t need to, oh ritually scourge himself for mispronouncing the name of an obscure scholar that he’d only ever read, even if Thea _was_ the leading expert on her. But still! That blush…  
  
Though she had only decided to _act_ foolishly recently, she had been wanting to see what else might cause Sandy to blush ever since he had asked her to be his dissertation adviser. He had come to her ordinary office hours, and when he described his project, he hadn’t blushed at all. He had been warm, lively, animated; a spark in his brown eyes that he normally hid. It was the most she’d ever heard him speak at once–at least without pausing for others. His project dealt with representations of sleep, both independent of and entwined with dreaming, beginning from a perspective highly, but not totally, enmeshed with cognitive science.  
  
After he’d explained it, he’d stopped, looked shocked at himself, and added in a rush, “I’m sorry, I went into that as if you’d already agreed to be my adviser, you don’t have to, of course, I know that your cognitive science work deals mostly with memory and you’re very busy, I could restrict my time period and find someone else, I’m sure you’d be able to recommend, but I mean, I really do want to work with you…”  
  
Well, the project really had sounded great. And she did know Sandy was equal to it. She hadn’t taken on the adviser role just because Sandy was cute. That was the worst reason to take on a diss and she knew it.  
  
But Sandy _was_ cute, and he had gotten even cuter over the past year, in a sort of miniature, wild-haired, baby-faced, absent-minded-professor-in-waistcoats kind of way. Tonight, at a _minimum_ she was determined to find out if he liked women or not.  
  
“I’m sorry,” says Sandy, calling her back to the present. “I just hate including Freud along with everything else. Literature is the only field which even pays lip service to him anymore, and I don’t want anyone to think I’m including him as a scientist.”  
  
“I don’t think there’s any risk of that,” Thea says with a smile. “And you must have known you were going to have to address him within the scope of your project.”  
  
Sandy makes a face. “And so I stuck everything about him in one chapter that I keep avoiding.”  
  
“And I’m glad you’re avoiding it with me,” Thea says.   
  
The waiter comes over and fills their wine glasses. Thea had insisted on choosing what they would drink, and had managed to prevent Sandy from getting a glimpse of the prices. The wine fell like liquid garnet into the large, crystal glasses, and Thea hopes Sandy will like it. She hopes he’ll drink…well, enough.   
  
Enough to get talkative, at least. “Here,” she says, raising her glass, “a toast to all the progress you’ve made, and to taking a break tonight. I mean it.” She catches Sandy’s eyes. Such a pretty brown. “Once you drink, no more shop talk all night.”  
  
“To progress, then,” Sandy says firmly, and, then, as if he can’t believe himself, “and to taking a break.” He drinks, and smiles a bit ruefully at the glass. It’s delicious–and how long has it been since he’s had good wine? Wine that didn’t need to be put in a blender to be made tolerable? Too long–he’d better watch himself. He doesn’t want to make a fool of himself in front of–Thea–who’s already disconcerting enough in a long green dress with only one shoulder strap.  
  
He can’t think of his adviser this way. He just can’t! The initial intellectual crush was bad enough, but who could it be more inappropriate for him to be physically attracted to?  
  
He wonders what she’d have to say if he said the smooth line of her neck and shoulder, revealed by both the dress and her short haircut, was going to be engraved into his memory forever. He takes another sip from his glass, if only to keep himself from staring.   
  
They share charcuterie and cheese for appetizers, and Thea orders more wine for Sandy when he empties his glass. He apologizes, but, “No, no,” Thea tells him. She drove. This is her treat. He can have as much as he wants.  
  
Forbidden from talking about academic work, the conversation turns to movies, music, their own adventures–and while Thea has more than a few exciting stories from her early sabbaticals, she keeps most of them to herself, for Sandy’s finally doing the opposite. His stories are all about finding things, seeing things, all just the sorts of stories a quiet, curious child would have.   
  
His voice grows calmer and more confident as the night goes on, and she wonders who else knows him like this. He talks with his hands, he smiles easily, his humor grows sharper and not as self-deprecating. And still he’s said nothing indicative about past crushes.   
  
Their dinner plates are carried away and Thea narrows her eyes. She just needs a little encouragement. Just a little. It’s time to ask a question or two, as only dessert remains.  
  
“So, Sandy, is there anyone I’m stealing you away from on this night off? Someone who wouldn’t like that we’re ordering one chocolate cheesecake with two forks?” Lord, what a question. She’s got to really think hard about whether she should be driving or not. Ah, but then again…  
  
She finishes her glass of wine and enjoys watching Sandy blush again. “I don’t think that anyone’d be able to stand me while I work on this project,” he says. “Oh, is that breaking the rules?”  
  
“Yes, take a penalty,” Thea says, and Sandy grins and takes a sip of his drink. “But really—well, I shouldn’t pry. But you restrict yourself in what you talk about when we meet, usually. This night has been so, so different.”  
  
“In a good way, I hope,” says Sandy.   
  
“Of course!”  
  
Sandy smiles. “I just…most of the time I just want to make sure that I’m not wasting your time or boring you.”  
  
“Sandy.” Thea almost places her hand on his wrist, but the dessert arrives and separates them before the action becomes too obvious. “I know you’ve gotten an article accepted for _Science Fiction Studies_. That means we’re peers. And I hope you believe that when I became your adviser, I knew I was going to be spending a rather large amount of time around you. I like you, Sandy.” Maybe more than you know.  
  
“Then I’ll—I’ll try to be a little more forthcoming. So.” Sandy goes about taking a forkful of the cake as if it’s a much more complicated process than it really is. “Let’s just say, I tend to set my sights a little too high when it comes to romance.”  
  
Is it an encouraging answer? Thea decides it must be.  
  


* * *

  
  
“I’m sorry, Sandy, I hope this isn’t too inconvenient,” Thea says as they wait for a cab on a bench outside the restaurant. “I forgot how much of a lightweight I was.”  
  
“If you’re not worried about having your car towed, I’m glad to spend more time with you,” Sandy says.  
  
“My worries are entirely different,” she says, stretching and yawning. When she lowers her arms, the one without a strap rests around Sandy’s shoulders. Sandy blinks several times, telling himself sternly not to lean into Dr. Ana, no matter how drunk he is, no matter how drunk she is, and no matter that he’s now able to tell that she’s wearing perfume that smells like some sort of tropical fruit. And no matter how much that was the most obvious and cliché yawn-stretch-arm-now-on-your-shoulders thing he’d seen outside of a cartoon.   
  
But if Dr. Ana wants him—well. That’s exactly what he wants, too, isn’t it?  
  
“How do you get your hair to do this?” Thea asks, ruffling his unruly almost-curls.  
  
“There’s no way to get it to stop!” Thea Ana is playing with his hair. _Dr. Thea Ana_ is not only his adviser, she is also _playing with his hair_. He feels her nails against his scalp and his heart pounds.   
  
“It makes you look like a star,” Thea says, edging closer.  
  
He has to say something, anything! Otherwise he might, who knows, start _purring_ or something equally absurd. “What if,” he begins. Good. Hypotheticals were always good.  
  
“What if what?” Thea asks. Her hand that isn’t playing with Sandy’s hair is wrapped around the bench. She wants to place it on Sandy’s chest and work on undoing those waistcoat buttons. But not yet. Maybe not ever. She could still debate about what she should do while they were in the taxi. She could still take this slow. This was a strange moment, but not irreversibly strange.  
  
“What if the taxi just took us to your house?”  
  
Or Sandy could ask something like that. Thea laughs, and knows that Sandy can probably feel her laughing. “I think that’s a brilliant intuitive leap,” she says into his bright pink ear. “I’ve got plenty of space to sober up in…and,” she feels herself blushing, now, “anything else.”  
  
“I—I may need more guidance there than I did with writing,” Sandy stammers, still in a state of shock, both at what he said and Thea’s response.  
  
Thea kisses his cheek and it’s just as smooth and warm and peachy as she expected it to be. “Don’t fret,” she says. “You know I’m a very involved adviser.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tags and Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> #rarepair ahoy!#I think I could grow to like this pair A LOT#like a lot a lot
> 
> bowlingforgerbils said: Yay, I won! Uh, I mean… this was really sweet. :) It kept enough of the the teacher/student dynamic without it being creepy. I want to be Dr. Thea Ana, she seems awesome.


End file.
